Susan Nielsen: 'Distracted walking' is a problem, but could that talking TriMet bus please shut up?

This week I heard a voice in downtown Portland that drowned out all other sound. It was an electronic voice of omniscient female authority booming out of a TriMet bus a block away, like Siri on a police bullhorn.

"PEDESTRIANS," the voice said, "BUS IS TURNING."

"PEDESTRIANS," the voice repeated, under the mistaken impression that the whole city wasn't already listening. "BUS IS TURNING."

I'm sorry, but that is not a pedestrian-safety system. That's a clear sign that the war for people's attention, being waged among our electronic devices, has gotten totally out of hand.

This spring, TriMet is running another pilot program to test warning systems on select bus routes, as The Oregonian's Joseph Rose has reported. The Federal Transit Administration gave the Portland-metro transit agency $400,000 to help combat the growing problem of distracted pedestrians whose phones render them oblivious to oncoming traffic

TriMet's now experimenting with three onboard warning systems on five bus routes. One features the voice of Officer Siri, automatically activated when the bus makes a sharp turn. Another sounds like the disembodied voice of that airport lady who tries to keep you from falling down at the end of the moving sidewalk.

Hear them once, and you'll understand why people who live along pilot routes are pulling out their hair. Hear them twice, and you'll be terrified that TriMet might adopt this technology systemwide.

TriMet does say this program is only a test, and it acknowledges that noise pollution is a concern: The transit agency is working on tweaks to lower the volume at night and in quieter areas. Also, TriMet deserves credit for taking safety more seriously after a driver made an illegal left turn in downtown Portland in 2010 and hit five people in a crosswalk, killing two of them.

Still, it's hard to fathom how a "talking bus" system could make the streets safer. In fact, a fleet of talking buses might actually endanger pedestrians in three new ways. For starters, people walking in downtown Portland and other high-transit, sharp-turn areas would learn to tune out the clamor of overlapping warnings: "PEDESTRIANS BUS IS TURNING is turning PEDESTRIANS Caution BUS IS turning TURNING Caution TURNING."

At the same time, pedestrians might develop a false sense of security around less chatty MAX trains, streetcars, delivery trucks and all of the other large moving objects that don't announce their intentions.

Finally, a warning system would shift some of the implied responsibility away from bus drivers (whose highest calling is to avoid running people over), while serving as an extreme irritant to those same drivers. This seems like a recipe for more chronic stress and greater risk, rather than increased public safety.

The number of emergency room visits sought by pedestrians injured while using their cell phones nearly tripled in the United States between 2004 and 2010, and the numbers are expected to double again by 2015. Some communities are looking at fines for "distracted walking," while others have mounted public-awareness campaigns. Even Stanford University reports trouble with its otherwise bright students falling down stairs and suffering other accidents while walking and texting.

Naturally, the tech industry is racing to the rescue with more technology. Apple is exploring an innovation that would enable pedestrians to text and walk more easily by using the phone's camera to capture live video of the surroundings and use it as the backdrop to the text conversation. Engineers in the auto industry are working on sensing devices that could notify drivers with pop-up alerts when nearby pedestrians seem distracted.

Combined with the talking buses, you can see where this is going: The people around you are digitized into "people." Your outside environment becomes one of responding to electronic stimuli, video-game style.

I was scared straight last year by the whoosh of a too-close MAX train. I was checking work email and blackout walking, and probably would not have heard an oncoming bus even if it were shouting my first and last name. So I'm all in favor of safety measures, including public education campaigns, additional anti-fatigue rules for bus drivers, and fines for pedestrians who text in the middle of a public street. It seems we could use the help.

But those talking buses?

No offense, Officer Siri and Airport Lady, but we can't get rid of you fast enough.